Fossil fuel is a general term for buried combustible geologic deposits of organic materials, formed from decayed plants and animals that have been converted to crude oil, coal, natural gas, or heavy oils by exposure to heat and pressure in the earth's crust over hundreds of millions of years.
Fossil fuels are a finite, non-renewable resource. With global modernization in the 20th and 21st centuries, the thirst for energy from fossil fuels, especially gasoline derived from oil, is one of the causes of major regional and global conflicts. Increased demand for energy by the global economy has also placed increasing pressure on the cost of hydrocarbons. Aside from energy, many industries, including plastics and chemical manufacturers, rely heavily on the availability of hydrocarbons as a feedstock for their manufacturing processes. Alternatives to current sources of supply could help mitigate the upward pressure on these raw material costs.
Lipids for use in biofuels can be produced in microorganisms, such as algae, fungi, and bacteria. Typically, manufacturing a lipid in a microorganism involves growing microorganisms, such as algae, fungi, or bacteria, which are capable of producing a desired lipid in a fermentor or bioreactor, isolating the microbial biomass, drying it, and extracting the intracellular lipids.
There is a need for a process for extracting lipids from microorganism which solves the above problems of low efficiency and high cost of lipid extraction from microorganism. The present invention provides a solution to these prior art problems.